


The Lightning of the Tempest

by thatonekid_gotakunerd



Category: The Tempest - Shakespeare
Genre: Ariel's my favorite character, Dang it, Don't know why I do this, He's the worst, I hate Prospero, I hate the way Prospero treats Ariel, I was like what if Ariel had a best friend or sibling, I'm Weird, Oh whoops that's the whole summary, Sorry Not Sorry, and see prospero being a jerk, and then they come in at the second scene in act one, and they spent like 25 years looking for him, because Sycorax is a terrible person, but he has to be a guy, sorry - Freeform, that he couldn't remember because Sycorax is a terrible person, too bad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 01:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5439014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatonekid_gotakunerd/pseuds/thatonekid_gotakunerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basically, I accidentally put it all in the tags and didn't feel like moving it, so if you haven't please read the tags, it's all there I promise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act One, Scene One

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry for the awful Shakespearish, I will be using parts from the book, I'm sure those will sound fine, but my parts will be awful, so sorry, I tried.  
> Also it starts in Act I, Scene II, with Ariel's first entrance.

PROSPERO: Come away, servant, come! I am ready now.  
Approach, my Ariel, come!

(Enter ARIEL)

ARIEL: All hail, great master, grave sir, hail. I come  
to answer thy best pleasure. Be't to fly,  
to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride  
on the curled clouds, to thy strong bidding task  
Ariel and all his quality. 

PROSPERO: Hast thou, spirit,  
perform to point the tempest that I bade thee?

ARIEL: To every article.  
I boarded the King's ship. Now on the beak,  
now in the waste, the deck, and in every cabin,  
I flamed amazement. Sometime I'd divide,  
and burn in many places on the top-mast,  
the yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly;  
then meet and join. Jove's lightning, the precursors  
O'th' dreadful thunderclaps, more momentary  
and sight-outrunning were not. The fire and cracks  
of sulphurous roaring the most mighty Neptune  
seem to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble,  
Yea his read trident shake. 

(Enter BLAZE, invisible to both)

PROSPERO: My brave spirit!  
Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil  
would not infect his reason?

ARIEL: Not a soul  
but felt a fever of the mad, and played  
some tricks of desperation. All but mariners  
plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel,  
then all afire with me. The King's son, Ferdinand,  
with hair upstarting - the like reeds, not hair -  
was the first man that leaped; cried 'Hell is empty,  
and all the devils are here'.

BLAZE: (Aside) Surely there stands mine brother,  
but who is this he speaks to so?  
Who addresses fair Ariel as spirit?

PROSPERO: Why, that's my spirit!  
But was not this nigh shore?

ARIEL: Close by, my master.

BLAZE: (Aside) Master?  
What of the foulest beast Sycorax?  
Where art her charms, that mine  
brother calls this toad master?

PROSPERO: But are they, Ariel, safe?

ARIEL: Not a hair perished.  
On their sustaining garments not a blemish,  
but fresher than before. And, as thou bad'st me,  
in troops I have dispersed them 'bout the isle.  
The King's son have I landed by himself.  
Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs  
in an odd angle of the isle, and sitting,  
his arms in this sad knot. 

PROSPERO: Of the King's ship,  
the mariners, say how thous hast diposed,  
and all the rest o'th' fleet.

BLAZE: (Aside) All may yet be well. This new master here  
seems of a softer temperament than th'hag  
he served 'ere last we spoke. If Sycorax be  
truly gone and this lord's mettle prove  
kind, all may be well.

ARIEL: Safely in harbour  
is the King's ship, in the deep nook where once  
thou called'st me up at midnight to fetch dew  
from the still-vexed Bermudas, there she's hid;

the mariners all under hatches stowed,  
who, with a charm joined to their suffered labour,  
I have left alseep. And for the rest o'th' fleet,  
which I dispersed, they all have met again,  
and are upon the Mediterranean float  
bound sadly home for Naples,  
supposing they saw the King's ship wrecked,  
and his great person perish.

PROSPERO: Ariel, thy charge  
exactly is performed; but there's more work.  
What is the time o'th' day?

ARIEL: Past the mid season.

PROSPERO: At least two glasses. The time 'twixt six and now  
must by us both be spent most preciously.

ARIEL: Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains,  
Let me remember thee what thou hast promised  
which is not yet perform me.

PROSPERO: How now? Moody?  
What is't thou canst demand?

ARIEL: My liberty.

BLAZE: (Aside) Brother. . .

PROSPERO: Before the time be out? No more!

ARIEL: I prithee,  
remember I have done thee worthy service,  
told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served  
without or grude or grumblings. Thou did promise  
to bate me a full year. 

PROSPERO: Dost thou forget  
From what a torment I did free thee?

ARIEL: No.

PROSPERO: Thou dost, and think'st it much to tread the ooze  
of the salt deep,  
to run upon the sharp wind of the north,  
to do me business in the veins o'th' earth  
when it is baked with frost.

ARIEL: I do not, sir.

PROSPERO: Thou liest, malginant thing. Hast thou forgot  
the foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy was  
grown into a hoop? Hast thou forgot her?

ARIEL: No, sir.

PROSPERO: Thou hast. Where was she born? Speak, tell me!

ARIEL: Sir, in Algiers.

PROSPERO: O, was she so! I must  
once in a month recount what thou hast been  
which thou forget'st. The damned witch Sycorax,  
for mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible  
to enter human hearing, from Algiers  
thou know'st was banished. For one thing she did  
they would not take her life. Is that not true?

ARIEL: Ay, sir. 

PROSPERO: This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child,  
and here was left by th' sailors. Thou, my slave,  
as thou report'st thyself, was then her servant;  
and for thou wast a spirit too delicate  
to act her earthy and abhorred commands,  
refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee  
by help of her more potent ministers,  
and in her most unmitigable rage,  
into a cloven pine, within which rift  
imprisoned thou didst painfully remain  
a dozen years, within which space she died  
and left thee there, where thou didst vent thy groans  
as fast as mill-wheels strike. Then was this island-  
save for the son that she did litter here,  
a freckled whelp, hag-born - not honoured with  
a human shape.

ARIEL: Yes, Caliban, her son.

PROSPERO: Dull thing, I say so. He, that Caliban  
whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st  
what torment I did find thee in. Thy groans  
did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts  
of ever-angry bears; it was a torment  
to lay upon the damned, which Sycorax  
could not again undo. It was mine art,  
When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape  
the pine and let thee out. 

ARIEL: I thank thee, master.

PROSPERO: If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak,  
and peg thee in his knotty entrails  
till thou has howled away twelve winters.

ARIEL: Pardon, master.  
I will be correspondent to command,  
and do my spiriting gently. 

PROSPERO: Do so and after two days  
I will discharge thee. 

ARIEL: That's my noble master!  
What shall I do? Say what, what shall I do? 

BLAZE: (Aside) Noble master?

PROSPERO: Go make thyself like to a nymph o'th' sea. Be subject  
to no sight but thine and mine, invisible  
to every eyeball else. Go take this shape,  
and hither come in't. Go; hence with diligence!

(Exit ARIEL.)

BLAZE: Noble master? Foul Sycorax didst near  
treat thee better. 'Tis a yellow-bellied brute  
that doles out cruelties under the guise of a  
kindness. The winds against you, treacherous sir,  
and teach you true feeling of remorse and not  
this manipulation. 

(Exit BLAZE.)


	2. Act One, Scene Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blaze talks to Ariel.

Scene Two: (Enter ARIEL)  
(Enter BLAZE)

BLAZE: How dost thou, good Ariel?

ARIEL: Who are thou that calls me  
by name?

BLAZE: Dost thou not know me? 

ARIEL: I do not.

BLAZE: I prithee, look again,  
and wake thy sleeping mind.  
Dost thou see nothing?

ARIEL: Pardon, but nothing.

BLAZE: So thou art lost again.  
Oh, my brother, to lose thee twice.

ARIEL: How is it that thou canst  
see me?

BLAZE: Oh, that I should be blind  
to mine own brethren! As spirit  
thou art as solid to me as human. 

ARIEL: Art thou spirit?

BLAZE: Yes, and of fire. Truly, thou  
knows me not?

ARIEL: Truly, yet thou knowest me.  
We have met once before?

BLAZE: Oh, longer than once, but  
'ere we'd met twice, I'd lost thee.  
Seeing as thou knowest me not,  
it seems fit to introduce us again.  
I am called Blaze, nymph of flame,  
bound to none. Thou art Ariel, tempest,  
a spirit of the air, bound to?

ARIEL: My master calls himself Prospero.

BLAZE: Bound to the mage Prospero.  
How dost thou since Sycorax?

ARIEL: Thou knowest of Sycorax, as well?  
Thou art a stranger, but for thy familiarity. 

BLAZE: Thou remembers her contract?

ARIEL: As it was written.

BLAZE: False, rotten contract, but farther.  
How fared thou?

ARIEL: She, Sycorax, did compel me to all  
sort of horrid deeds, but just short of having  
served a full year, I could, her wickedest command  
no more obey. Angered, thus, she bound me in a  
tree of pine. There I remained, I am told, some dozen  
years. Prospero unbound the spell, binding myself to  
him, and Sycorax was gone, dead said he, after  
childbirth. Hence I have served him. 

BLAZE: I could tell a longer one, with this, methinks.  
Thou and I were infants together, for as much as spirits  
can be infant. We sought to discover the world apaired  
and moved from wilderness to land of men, called then Algiers.  
Many spirits moved amongst the land, a larger troupe  
over one house 'bove the other. Thus attracted, we made  
to see the meaning of the gathering. It was the hag herself,  
but as she'd no fire to contain myself with, she sought, with  
her ministers to make a slave of thee. The contract struck  
there was naught I could do. She could tell, I presume, that  
I'd not abandon thee, mine own brethren and so took thy  
memories, wiped thy mind as blank to prohibit me  
from moving 'gainst her.  
This scheme of hers did work, for you'd no knowledge  
of the free, and I no more sense of thy presence.  
It took two decades and a half 'ere, upon this hour  
I found thee. 

ARIEL: Brethren?

BLAZE: We are spirit are we not?  
Of one kind and no king.  
For this Prospero,  
When dost thy service end? How long 'til thy liberty?  
For he nigh as bad as Sycorax for having kept thee  
bound so long after thy debt. A dozen turns have  
passed, have they not, since you 'came his?

ARIEL: Ay, but he doth promise freedom in  
two days time, so long as I serve well.  
But, lo, the time comes, I must away,  
there's duty to be done. 

BLAZE: Then I'll shadow thee. 

(Exit BLAZE and ARIEL.)

(Enter PROSPERO)

PROSPERO: So another spirit walks upon this isle.  
She may pollute fair Ariel's mind, I'll mark her.  
(Exuent PROPSERO)


End file.
